A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year One of NPR's 10 Best Novels of 2011

Denis Johnson's Train Dreams is an epic in miniature, one of his most evocative and poignant fictions.

Robert Grainer is a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century—an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime.

Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West—its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge builders—the new novella by the National Book Award-winning author of Tree of Smoke captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.

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Quotes & Awards

At his worst, man is haunted by the past--the past reappearing in our dreams as a constant reminder of mistakes, of loved ones lost and of the indelible mark left on our memory by the sometimes violent imagery of life. Denis Johnson . . . portrays these sentiments in Train Dreams, a perfectly understated novella that tells the story of everyman Robert Grainier . . . Grainier is a man ultimately measured by movement: 'He'd started his life story on a train ride he couldn't remember, and ended up standing around outside a train with Elvis Presley in it.'Lucas Sarcona, News Review

Denis Johnson's novel . . . is like a crystal: hard, gem-like, and intricately structured . . . Johnson's prose is simple yet lyrical, and its clear beauty often reflects the things it describes . . . Even more striking are the descriptions of Grainier's almost elemental lonesomeness.Anthony Domestico, Commonweal

Johnson captures the feeling of the woods and the small towns built around mining, logging and the new railroads. Indians and Chinese laborers also play significant roles . . . The writing is spare and frequently beautiful; Johnson's backwoods dialogue and tall tales are often hilarious; and he graces us with such wonderful words as ‘pulchritude' and ‘confabulation'--it's a shame we don't hear them much anymore.Stephen K. Tollefson, San Francisco Chronicle

In a way, Train Dreams puts me in mind of a late Bob Dylan album: with the wildness and psychedelia of youth burned out of him, Johnson's eccentricity is revealed as pure Americana.Gabriel Brownstein, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

A meditative, often magical book . . . Deceptively simple language and arresting details make this a book to read slowly . . . Johnson's portrait of a man who stands still as life marches on is itself something timeless.Kate Tuttle, Boston.com

Take the time to peruse Johnson's corpus, and the inescapable conclusion is that its recurring elements are passions, revisited thoughtfully, not out of complacency or lack of imagination. Train Dreams drives this spike home in two ways. The first is that its time period marked a major departure for Johnson, one presumably demanding a staggering deal of research. —Stefan Beck, The Barnes and Noble Review

[Train Dreams] is a triumph of spare writing that sketches the life of [Robert] Grainier, a logger and hauler born in 1886, and who dies, in a different world, in 1968 . . . in a blend of myth and history, Johnson builds a world around Grainier . . . Johnson, a poet, playwright and novelist, won the National Book Award in 2007 for his sprawling Vietnam War novel, Tree of Smoke. But he goes short as well as he goes long. Train Dreams . . . is a gem of a story, set in rough times, in a tough terrain, and tenderly told.Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today

Johnson's new novella may be his most pared-down work of fiction yet, but make no mistake--it packs a wallop . . . Train Dreams is a small book of weighty ideas. It renders the story of America and our westward course of empire in the most beautiful and heartbreaking manner imaginable . . . Train Dreams explores what was lost in the process of American growth.Andrew Ervin, The Miami Herald

I first read Denis Johnson's Train Dreams in a bright orange 2002 issue of The Paris Review and felt that old thrill of discovery . . . Every once in a while, over the ensuing nine years, I'd page through that Paris Review and try to understand how Johnson had made such a quietly compelling thing. Part of it, of course, is atmosphere.Anthony Doerr, The New York Times Book Review

“[A] severely lovely tale . . . The visionary, miraculous element in Johnson's deceptively tough realism makes beautiful appearances in this book. The hard, declarative sentences keep their powder dry for pages at a time, and then suddenly flare into lyricism; the natural world of the American West is examined, logged, and frequently transfigured. I started reading ‘Train Dreams' with hoarded suspicion, and gradually gave it all away, in admiration of the story's unaffected tact and honesty . . .

James Wood, The New Yorker

National Book Award winner Johnson (Tree of Smoke) has skillfully packed an epic tale into novella length in this account of the life of Idaho Panhandle railroad laborer Robert Grainer . . . The gothic sensibility of the wilderness and isolated settings and Native American folktales, peppered liberally with natural and human-made violence, add darkness to a work that lingers viscerally with readers . . . Highly recommended.Library Journal (starred)

National Book Award-winner Johnson, ever the literary shape-shifter, looks back to America's expansionist fever dream in a haunting frontier ballad about a loner named Robert Granier . . . Johnson draws on history and tall tales to adroitly infuse one contemplative man's solitary life with the boundless mysteries of nature and the havoc of humankind's breakneck technological insurgency, creating a concentrated, reverberating tale of ravishing solemnity and molten lyricism.Donna Seaman, Booklist

Readers eager for a fat follow-up to Tree of Smoke could be forgiven a modicum of skepticism at this tidy volume . . . but it would be a shame to pass up a chance to encounter the synthesis of Johnson's epic sensibilities rendered in miniature in the clipped tone of Jesus' Son . . . An ode to the vanished West that captures the splendor of the Rockies as much as the small human mysteries that pass through them, this svelte stand-alone has the virtue of being a gem in itself, and, for the uninitiated, a perfect introduction to Johnson.Publishers Weekly (starred)

Denis Johnson's Train Dreams is like a long out-of-print B-side, a hard-to-find celebrated work treasured by those in the know that's finally become available to the rest of us . . . . Train Dreams is a peculiarly gripping book. It palpably conjures the beauty of an American West then still very much a place of natural wonder and menace, and places one man's lonely life in that landscape, where he's at once comfortably at home and utterly lost.Dan DeLuca, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Johnson is one of our finest writers. His characters are usually not the high and mighty but the down-and-out, sometimes marginalized individuals who struggle to communicate their deeper longings or their encounters with the transcendent. A poet, he infuses his narratives with images that sparkle and even jolt but never overwhelm the reader . . .Gordon Houser, The Wichita Eagle

Train Dreams is a gorgeous, rich book about the classic American myth, but written for a country that's lost faith in its own mythology . . . Train Dreams, luscious with grief, regret, and lowered expectations, is a lesson in end-of-the-frontier humility for a country anticipating apocalypse.K. Reed Perry, Electric Literature

“A tender, lonesome,
and riveting story, an American epic writ small…It’s a love story, a hermit’s
story, and a refashioning of age-old wolf-based folklore like “Little Red Cap.”
It’s also a small masterpiece. You look up from the thing dazed, slightly
changed…It might be the most powerful thing Johnson has ever written.”

New York Times Book Review

Johnson beautifully conveys what he calls ‘the steadying loneliness' of most of Grainier's life, the ordinary adventures of a simple man whose people are, we hear, ‘the hard people of the northwestern mountains,' and toward the end even convinces us of his character's inquisitive and perhaps even deeper nature than we might first have imagined. Grainier ‘lived more than eighty years, well into the 1960s,' we learn. Most people who read this beautifully made word-engraving on the page will find him living on.Alan Cheuse, NPR

Train Dreams is a portrait of containment, of compression and restraint . . . On the one hand, what Johnson is evoking is the sweep of time, of history, as seen through an archetypal life. Grainer is an ideal filter for such an effort: born in one century, living mostly in another, he becomes a three-dimensional metaphor for the industrialization of the country, the slow passage from rural to commercial, the commodification of our collective soul.David. L. Ulin, The Los Angeles Times

Train Dreams is an eloquently scattershot biography of a fictional labourer who lived much of his life in the woods, alone. It's a compressed epic about wolf-children, ghosts, wilderness, fearsome weather and the lingering threads that kept man tied to animal in the western parts of our continent--a connection lost to the past century . . . [It] is as magnificent, spellbinding and intermittently awkward as anything Denis Johnson has ever done . . .José Teodoro, Edmonton Journal

While in [Johnson's] writerly company you cannot help but believe that the world is a function of his apprehension of it, and it is this quality that lends his matchless prose its sense of having been less written than received, an effortless and profound transmission, radio waves unscrolling in the black sea between the prairie and the star map--all that heady bullshit, but ringing true . . . Train Dreams is also very funny. Quirky, colorful, off-beat characters intrude on Grainier's solitude at regular intervals, each one a babbling fool.Justin Taylor, The Faster Times

Grainier's story is the story of an ordinary man told in an extraordinary way in extraordinarily spare yet magical prose . . . some of Johnson's best writing is on display here. It is a book of wonders both real and imagined, of great locomotives that traversed the continent and sawmills that conquered the big woods, of a curse by a persecuted ‘Chinaman' that (perhaps) brings destruction on Grainier's wife and daughter and their little cabin in the woods, a great fire Grainier would remember his entire life, like something Biblical in modern times.Anthony Wallace, The Arts Fuse

“An eloquent portrait
of the early twentieth-century American West and an affecting tale of one man’s
struggle to live with loss…[Johnson] proves his skill at drawing the kind of
grim Americana you might expect from Cormac McCarthy or Annie Proulx. Indeed, Train Dreams has much in common with Proulx’s
story ‘Brokeback Mountain’—the flinty Western setting, the roiling emotions of
a quiet working man.”

Washington Post

“Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams is like a long out-of-print
B-side, a hard-to-find celebrated work treasured by those in the know that’s
finally become available to the rest of us…Train
Dreams is a peculiarly gripping book. It palpably conjures the beauty of an
American West, then still very much a place of natural wonder and menace, and
places one man’s lonely life in that landscape, where he’s at once comfortably
at home and utterly lost.”

Philadelphia Inquirer

“Johnson captures the
feeling of the woods and the small towns built around mining, logging, and the
new railroads. Indians and Chinese laborers also play significant roles…The writing
is spare and frequently beautiful; Johnson’s backwoods dialogue and tall tales
are often hilarious; and he graces us with such wonderful words as
‘pulchritude’ and ‘confabulation’—it’s a shame we don’t hear them much anymore.”

San Francisco Chronicle

“Train Dreams puts me in mind of a late Bob Dylan album: with the
wildness and psychedelia of youth burned out of him, Johnson’s eccentricity is
revealed as pure Americana.”

Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Johnson’s new
novella may be his most pared-down work of fiction yet, but make no mistake—it
packs a wallop…Train Dreams is a
small book of weighty ideas. It renders the story of America and our westward
course of empire in the most beautiful and heartbreaking manner imaginable…Train Dreams explores what was lost in
the process of American growth. Much to his credit, Johnson doesn’t simply
posit industry and nature against each other, or science and religion, or even
human and animal, but instead looks at how their interactions can transform
both. And [Robert] Grainier is there through all of this examination, over the
course of his long and sad life, to serve as our witness and maybe even our
conscience.”

Miami Herald

“Johnson beautifully
conveys what he calls ‘the steadying loneliness’ of most of Grainier’s life,
the ordinary adventures of a simple man whose people are, we hear, ‘the hard
people of the northwestern mountains,’ and toward the end even convinces us of
his character’s inquisitive and perhaps even deeper nature than we might first
have imagined.”

NPR

“Johnson has
skillfully packed an epic tale into novella length in this account of the life
of Idaho Panhandle railroad laborer Robert Grainer…The gothic sensibility of
the wilderness and isolated settings and Native American folktales, peppered
liberally with natural and human-made violence, add darkness to a work that
lingers viscerally with readers.”

Library Journal (starred review)

“Johnson, ever the
literary shape-shifter, looks back to America’s expansionist fever dream in a
haunting frontier ballad about a loner named Robert Granier…Johnson draws on
history and tall tales to adroitly infuse one contemplative man’s solitary life
with the boundless mysteries of nature and the havoc of humankind’s breakneck
technological insurgency, creating a concentrated, reverberating tale of
ravishing solemnity and molten lyricism.”

Booklist

“An ode to the
vanished West that captures the splendor of the Rockies as much as the small
human mysteries that pass through them, this svelte stand-alone has the virtue
of being a gem in itself, and, for the uninitiated, a perfect introduction to
Johnson.”

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A 2012 Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Fiction

A New York Times bestseller

One of the 2011 New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books for Fiction

A 2011 Esquire Magazine Best Book of the Year for Fiction

A 2011 Los Angeles Times Best Book for Fiction

Among shortlisted titles for Pulitzer Prize - Finalist, 2012

Among longlisted titles for Esquire Magazine Best Books of the Year

Listener Opinions

Newengland | 2/10/2014

" This is a one-day novella with honest, straight-forward writing chronicling the rather lonely life of a logger named Robert Grainier. Opens with a bang -- the violent death of an accused Chinese man among railroad workers. In a scene uncomfortable both physically and morally, Robert and a handful of other white men drag the fighting foreigner to the middle of the bridge they're building far above the Moyea River. It isn't pretty, but not a lot is in this stark book, including Grainier's brief marriage to a woman named Gladys. A real taste of the old northwest here, with fringes of magical realism thanks to Indian beliefs at times. Not a lot. Just enough to make the minimalist realism interesting. "

Caley | 2/3/2014

" Guess the bandwagon on this one passed me by. Too sparse, emotionally unfulfilling, and slightly... gasp... boring. I love period pieces and there's no doubt that Johnson nailed the history behind this one but there was some sort of missing link between character and reader that left me detached and disinterested. Maybe I was reading too fast? 3 stars. Pulitzer nominees always let me down. "

Ashley Kjos | 1/30/2014

" Good stuff. I agree with what most say, most of its power is derived from its brevity. Good atmosphere and a well rendered environment. Some odd disconnected passages. "

Lee Ellen | 1/19/2014

" When a wolf howls in the wilderness, there is a primal feeling that pricks the spine, a feeling whose depth is related to profound loneliness yet not quite tinged with despair. When one hears a wolf howl, one knows that he is way out there. That is the feeling this book evokes. Originally published as a short story, Train Dreams has been released as a novella that is well worth reading all at once. It is the story of a life - its protagonist, Grainier, lives out his life in northern Idaho with occasional forays into Washington and Oregon for woodsman's work and into Spokane for pleasure. Although he lives into the 1960's, most of the book takes place in the early 1900's, when Model-T Fords were a novelty and religion and superstition were great forces in the lives of men. Elegant yet spare in style, Denis Johnson places the reader in the story with all the senses: we get the smells and sounds of a burning forest, feel the hardness of life on the land, see the limpid beauty of a mountain sunset. This book is best experienced on a quiet evening when you have plenty of time to read it and then allow it to digest. "

Linny | 1/9/2014

" book group book which I read before - railroads conduit for history of the West, wonderful details of working life, protagonist loses wife / child in fire = becomes obsessed in his grief. A brief brilliant novel, intensely focused on span of his life. "

Vince Carter | 12/29/2013

" Atmospheric novella that captures the color and range of emotions of life in the mountain west at the turn of the last century. "

Martin Cerjan | 12/17/2013

" A gem! This novella evokes a time and place and builds a little world of its own. Masterful writing and a lesson for those wanting to write. I look forward to re-reading this book. "

Ken | 12/6/2013

" This is a short, easy read, and some have called it a man's book, which is a fair assessment, I suppose. On the other hand, the author has a clear command of words and emotions, handling bliss and despondency with equal grace. The scene in which the deceased wife comes back in a vision is powerful. "

Barbara A | 11/18/2013

" I want to quietly put this perfect, perfect book into the hands of every person I know. "

Danielle | 4/8/2013

" Very lyrical and very melancholy. "

Martin Bungle | 3/1/2013

" This novella was a very quick, enjoyable read. This was my first introduction to Denis Johnson and I look forward to reading some of his novels in the future. "

E. | 11/14/2012

" This was one of my first forays into books on tape and it was a great story for it as it can be digested in one sitting (or road trip). I enjoyed it. Eerie and tough and loaded with imagery. First thing by Denis Johnson I've enjoyed since Jesus Son. "

" Not sure why this one was up for the Pulitzer. Didn't really get into the protaginist much. "

Mike | 3/1/2012

" Short 100 page novella about a semi-hermits life in the Pacific Northwest in the 1900's. Lot of symbolism with the main character and the US. Enjoyable quick read. "

Misha | 1/31/2012

" Not my thing. It had some moments, but I just generally didn't care about the main character or what happened to him. Plus, do I really need to know that people buggered cows and raped young girls in the old West? Yeah, just meh. I need to reread "Jesus' Son" and forget about this one. "

Rebekah | 1/21/2012

" This book is the short offspring of Rudyard Kipling and Larry McMurtry. "

Matthew Balliro | 12/28/2011

" First read: Jan. 14, 2012 "

Jeanne | 12/18/2011

" This is a gem of a novella. "

Stuart | 11/7/2011

" A perfect novella. Johnson has a poet's eye. I read this quickly and devotedly. So happy to have read this as I have slogged through some real mediocre (at best) books as of late.
"

Mike | 10/16/2011

" Evocative. Reminiscent of Altman's McCabe & Mrs Miller.
"

Ken | 10/14/2011

" Denis Johnson's stunning novella follows the life of Pacific Northwestern day laborer Robert Grainier. Achingly told, this is a story that delves deep into the heart of a man who represents countless men who were our grandfathers and great grandfathers. A breathtaking book.
"

Other Titles by Denis Johnson:

About the Author

Denis Johnson (1949–2017) wrote eight novels, one novella, one book of short stories, three collections of poetry, two collections of plays, and one book of reportage. His novel Tree of Smoke won the 2007 National Book Award and was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize, and Train Dreams was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize.

About the Narrator

Will Patton is an award-winning actor and narrator. HIs narration of Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep earned the prestigious Audie Award for Best Fiction Narration in 2014. He has also won dozens of AudioFile Earphones Awards for his narrations. He starred in the TNT miniseries Into the West and on the CBS series The Agency and won Obie Awards in the theater for his performances in Fool for Love and What Did He See. He has appeared in a host of films, including A Mighty Heart with Angelina Jolie, Knucklehead, Brooklyn’s Finest, and Dog Days of Summer. His many television credits include The Agency, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, 24, and Numb3rs.

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